This piece is just <chef's kiss>. It's pretty long, so let me summarize. The DC police lodge - basically a social club for all the police unions in the capitol - started selling inscribed bottles of Jack Daniels for a huge mark-up. They made a ton of money off it, and it was startlingly illegal.
The conduct of police unions is problematic in the extreme. Some of the actions of teacher's unions (disclosure: there are no unions in private schools) during the pandemic have been unnecessary. Yet, workers need the protection of unions against things like a Trumpist purge of the public sector jobs or exploitive working conditions in the private sector.
Yglesias yesterday proposed using robotic cameras to enforce minor traffic laws to stop racially motivated in-person stops. On the surface, this seems smart, though the parameters of when they would issue a ticket would be critically important. 46 in a 35? When is a rolling stop a stop? In what neighborhoods will the cameras be placed? Just because a technological solution seems cleaner doesn't mean it's better. As Ferguson, Missouri taught us, Black and Brown communities can be exploited as cash cows for municipal governments.
But reining in cops - especially those protected by unions who themselves are capable of the sort of criminal behavior that would be leverage against a poor person - seems an imperative.
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